virtually ensured that environmental issues will be relegated to the
background, the imperatives of construction bulldozing their way past any
logic and rationality.

A critical analysis of the benefits claimed for the SSP (
Ram 1993) has
revealed that the SSP has no comprehensive plan for drinking water supply,
that it is likely to irrigate less than half the 1.9 million hectares
claimed, and that firm power output from the SSP will be only a fraction of
the installed capacity. Taken together with the analysis of environmental
impacts of the SSP carried out in this study, the viability and
desirability of the project itself must be questioned.

Even at this stage, we can only conclude that the SSP must be halted until
a comprehensive EIA is available, and until this EIA is tied in to other
basic studies (including social impact, financial viability, and
alternatives). Only such a process can determine whether this project is
worth pouring more money into, whether some essential design changes can
help make it viable, or whether some genuinely effective and less damaging
alternatives can be found to solve the water crisis of Kutch, Saurashtra
and North Gujarat.